Can you live without Windows, lets see the facts:
If you are .NET programmer don't read this post, you are definitely stuck with Windows.
If you aren’t a programmer or a designer, in this case you don't need Windows at all, You are very comfortable with Linux, actually you have so much free software and tools than you ever need in your life.
Basically any Java or PHP programmer don't need Windows, you are pretty fine with any distribution of Linux.
I'm Java programmer and I'm on Linux for last 5 years, I even forgot how windows looks like, everything looks fine until last month.
Suddenly I received two projects.
First project was implementation on WebDav technology. My client wants to open auto generated document in MS Word edit them and save back to server, which involves ActiveX technology developed by Microsoft and works only on Windows.
Second project was multimedia presentation CD developed in Adobe Flash, who I must confess works on any platform, but all development tools are made for Windows and Mac.
And there are so many problems with JavaScript on Internet Explorer vs Mozilla or Opera, than you can't even imagine, also there are problems with CSS, HTML and etc. I even don't want to mention different fonts and graphics display on Windows vs Linux. In several cases when I was almost ready with my UI I noticed that on Internet Explorer looks like shit.
Also development tools for Blackberry (mobile devices, Playbook tablet) especially simulators works only on Windows.
Major problem is that 95% of users in the world use Windows, you can't ignore that, and this means that you have to test on Windows, sometimes Windows is only platform for development on specific project.
So question asked at beginning “Can developers live without Windows” the answer is no, not yet
